


Inside Some Other Moment

by SunMoonAndSpoon



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Kissing, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24644575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMoonAndSpoon/pseuds/SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: When Kureno wakes up with a cold, Akito assumes that he got it from kissing someone else, and throws him into the middle of a 2 AM rainstorm with nothing but his pajamas. Unable to get a hotel, he seeks refuge at Shigure's house. Shigure sees an opportunity to rile up Akito, and lets him stay. But their feelings are messier than they realized.
Relationships: Sohma Kureno/Sohma Shigure
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	Inside Some Other Moment

Kureno never would have expected to be knocking on Shigure’s door at three in the morning, especially not during a torrential downpour, but here he is. Soaking wet and shivering so hard that his knees are knocking together.  
  
Akito kicked him out of the house about an hour ago. Kureno had woken up coughing and congested, and had offered to sleep in the guest room to make sure she didn’t catch his developing cold. 

That hadn’t been enough. Kureno getting sick wasn’t just inconvenient, it was a betrayal. 

She’d had questions, and assaults to go with them: How had he managed to pick up a virus when he wasn’t supposed to be going outside? _She slammed the bed with the heel of her hand._ Who had he gotten so close to that their germs got into his system? _She jabbed a finger into his face._ Did he touch a sick person? _She grabbed his face._ Kiss them? _She lunged at his mouth._ Who were they? _He ducked her kiss, and her questions rose to a scream._ DId he love them more than he loved Akito? _She ripped the lamp off the bedside table and hurled it at the wall, just missing his head._ Was he prepared to throw away their heavenly connection for the sake of some random diseased bitch he met on the street? _She grabbed the alarm clock and threw that, too. This time, Kureno forced his body to stay still and take the hit._ _  
_ _  
_ At the end of all that, she told him to leave. There was no way she was going to let him stay there, not after bringing pestilence into the house. When he sneezed into the crook of his elbow, she shoved him out the door and said that he wasn’t allowed on Sohma property at all.

He was wearing pajamas. He didn’t have his keys, his wallet, or even his shoes. If he’d had those things, maybe he could have booked a hotel room, but that was only theoretical anyway - he had no idea how to do that. He thought about sleeping on a park bench, but when rain started to drill into the back of his neck he decided that wasn’t an option.  
  
The only place he could think to go was Shigure’s house.  
  
He knocks on the door again, biting his lip as a shiver earthquakes down his spine.  
  
“Shigure,” he says, his voice creaky and raw. “Are you awake? It’s Kureno. Please open the door.”  
  
He can see Shigure through the window. Even though it’s 3 AM, he’s still awake for some reason. Kureno can’t tell if he’s ignoring him or not. He knocks again, this time falling forwards so that his elbows slam against the door.  
  
The door opens and he nearly faceplants into Shigure’s chest.  
  
“Kureno,” says Shigure, moving backwards so that Kureno has to windmill his arms to avoid falling flat on his face. His voice is stiff and guarded. “To what do I owe this dishonor?”  
  
He’s trying to be clever but he’s yawning and rubbing his eye as he speaks. This strikes Kureno as so hilarious that he almost starts laughing. That laughter is quickly swallowed by a coughing fit, one which leaves his chest feeling like crumpled newspaper.  
  
Shigure squints at him, then heaves a sigh. “Come in,” he says, gesturing vaguely towards his doorway. “If you die out in the rain Akito will probably throw a tantrum or something.”  
  
Clutching his arms and gritting his teeth past another harsh shiver, he heads inside. Shigure disappears, then returns with a towel and a dry checkered yukata. He says nothing, just angles his chin in the direction of the bathroom.  
  
It’s not like him to be this quiet, but it is 3 AM, after all. He’d been awake, but he can’t be particularly lively. 

Kureno certainly isn’t. That’s why when he gets to the bathroom he sits down on the toilet with his head in his hands, staring at the floor for nearly ten minutes before he can bring himself to dry off and change.  
  
Up until now, he’d been running on adrenaline, but now that he’s indoors and drying off he’s hit with the full weight of his exhaustion. 

His head is pounding and he can’t breathe through his nose. His heart rate is jacked up from terror and his shoulder hurts from where the alarm clock hit it. He doesn’t want to leave the bathroom and talk to somebody who he knows despises him.  
  
The sooner he gets it over with, the sooner he can go to sleep. He takes off his wet clothes, dries himself off and gets dressed. After another couple of minutes spent blowing his nose, he finally drags himself back to the living room.

“Give me your clothes so that we can put them in the dryer,” says Shigure.  
  
Kureno is about to do that, but when he opens his mouth he starts coughing. When he opens his teary eyes, Shigure is offering a glass of water. He takes it and drinks it, then wonders if drinking it was a mistake. He wouldn’t put it past Shigure to poison him.  
  
But the water is just water and his feelings are just paranoia. Shigure isn’t going to kill him just because he hates him.  
  
“You sound sick,” says Shigure, his face completely blank. “Is that why Akito kicked you out?”  
  
“How do you know she kicked me out?” Kureno says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.  
  
“Why else would you be here at 3 AM?  
  
“I could have left on my own.”  
  
Shigure laughs. “I won’t dignify that one with a response. Anyway, I’m not wrong, am I? What’s the matter - do you have a cold? Or is it something more serious?”  
  
“I think it’s just a cold,” Kureno says with a sniff. “But Akito is immunocompromised, so…”  
  
“Sure - and I bet she had some unflattering theories as to how you caught it in the first place, right? Probably an imaginary girlfriend or something?”  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
“Akito seems complicated, but she’s actually quite simple once you get to know her. I suppose it makes sense that you don’t. Know her, that is.”  
  
Torn between the desire to retort that he knows Akito a whole lot better than Shigure does and the desire to have a neutral, relaxing conversation, Kureno just shrugs instead of rising to Shigure’s bait. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, because his face is hijacked by a quartet of sneezes that leave him scrambling for a tissue. 

Shigure points to the box of tissues on the coffee table. Kureno grabs a handful and blows his nose. Once he finishes, his sinuses are throbbing and he still can’t breathe through his nose. 

“Gross,” Shigure says, his voice chipper. Kureno mumbles an apology, which Shigure ignores.  
  
He says, “so, I get why you left Akito’s place...but why did you come here? You know that I hate you, so why not make things easier on yourself and stay at a hotel?”  
  
“Akito didn’t give me a chance to grab my wallet, so I wouldn’t have been able to pay for it.” Kureno eyes the couch, wondering if it’s okay for him to sit down, too. He’s so tired that he can feel his knees buckling.  
  
“Hmm...okay, that makes sense. Akito would find out if you were staying somewhere else in the Main House, and it’s not like you have any friends or connections outside of that…” Shigure scratches his chin. “Well, anyway, I guess you can stay here for the night. I pity you enough to do you that favor.”  
  
“Thank you,” says Kureno with a sniff. He wishes Shigure would just lend him enough money to get a hotel room, but he isn’t about to make such a bold request. 

“I’m not sure where to put you,” says Shigure, pacing back and forth with his fingers pinching his chin. “I’d prefer it if the kids don’t know that you’re here. They’ll have all sorts of questions. But we don’t really have much space…oh! That’s it!” He slams his fist into the cupped palm of his hand. “You’ll sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch and pretend I fell asleep reading - I do that often enough that it won’t be suspicious.”  
  
“If you’re sure you don’t mind giving up your bed…”  
  
“Not at all.” Shigure’s smile is stretched so far across his face that it looks painful. “But listen, I have a proposition for you. No pressure if you’re not interested, but would you hear me out?”  
  
“Can I sit down first?”  
  
“Oh - where are my manners? Let’s take this to my room. You can sit down in there.”  
  
The two of them traverse the short distance to Shigure’s bedroom. The floor is littered with dirty clothes and crumpled pieces of paper. His desk and bed are just as bad - Kureno can barely see the desk underneath all of the pens, pill bottles, notebooks, and empty bags of taro chips. Shigure deposits a bathrobe and a t-shirt onto his desk chair, then pats the now cleared bed.  
  
Kureno can’t smell much through his congestion, but he’s guessing that the sheets are pretty rank. Nobody with a room like this is regularly changing their sheets. But ultimately, he’s too tired to care, so he just flops bonelessly onto the bed.  
  
“So Kureno,” says Shigure. “Would I be correct in assuming that you’re just as keen to piss Akito off as I am?”  
  
When Kureno says, “no, of course, I’m not,” he expects it to feel like the truth. His feelings about Akito are typically quite jumbled, but one thing he’s certain about is that his life is easier when she’s happy. It’s not just about his convenience, either - he _wants_ her to be happy.  
  
But in the dark pit of his heart, Kureno does want Akito to hurt, just a little. For caring about him so little that she’d toss him into the rain when she knew he was sick, and hurling baseless accusations and alarm clocks in his direction.  
  
But it isn’t just this incident or the others like it. It’s the fact that Akito saw him trying to fly away, then cried until he chained himself to the nest. It’s the fact that she’s claiming to love him while using him to bludgeon the person she actually loves, Shigure.  
  
Worst of all, she’d totally destroyed Kureno’s relationship with Shigure. Kureno _liked_ Shigure. He hadn’t slept with Akito to spite him. He’d done it because if he didn’t, she’d never have believed that he planned to stay by her side.  
  
“What are you thinking?” Kureno asks, rubbing the bruise on his shoulder.  
  
Flashing a wolfish smile, Shigure says, “I can’t think of anything that would upset her more than learning that her two playthings were having fun with each other behind her back. What do you see we get intimate and let her find out about it later?”  
  
As Shigure speaks, he sits down next to Kureno, so close that their thighs touch. Kureno’s face flushes and his heart starts to pound. He opens his mouth, unsure of what he plans to say, then stalls with an intentional cough that quickly turns into a violent fit. Once his throat stops spasming and his chest stops heaving, he tells Shigure that if they were ever going to do that, now would be the absolute worst time. “I have a cold,” he says. “It’s probably contagious.”  
  
“We can use that to our advantage,” Shigure says, playing with the hem of his yukata.  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“If we tell Akito that we enjoyed each other’s company without her, there’s a high chance that she won’t believe us. If you spend the night here and then two days later I call Hatori complaining that I caught a cold, she’ll know exactly what’s going on without me having to say a word.”  
  
Eyeing his own hand on the bed, Kureno says, “You’re more likely to catch this from touching the bed and then touching your eyes.”  
  
“Do you really think that someone who imagined you were having an affair because you got sick cares about those kinds of details? Believe me, it’ll work.”  
  
“This is pretty unpleasant as far as colds go - you probably shouldn’t risk catching it.”  
  
“I’m willing to suffer a lot more than that to make my Akito angry - this is nothing.” He lays a hand on Kureno’s shoulder. “Besides, I’ve been curious about what she sees in you for a while now. I think I’d appreciate the experience regardless. How about you? Have you been curious about me?” 

That question sucks all the breath out of Kureno’s lungs because of course, the answer is yes. He’d always wanted to know more about Shigure. Everything from mundane details like what books he’s been reading and what he likes to eat for breakfast to more meaningful concerns like how he ever worked up the courage to unyoke himself from Akito. What he looks like wearing a smile that isn’t sarcastic. What he looks like without his yukata on. What it would feel like to kiss him.  
  
Shigure spiders his fingers down Kureno’s arm and looks at him with half-closed eyes. He hums low in his throat, moves towards Kureno’s neck, and stops just short of kissing him. His breath is hot on Kureno’s goosebump-covered neck. Kureno swallows, triggering a jolt of pain in his throat.  
  
“What do you say?” Shigure asks, lacing his fingers through Kureno’s.  
  
Kureno’s arms hang limply around Shigure’s neck. As soon as he murmurs a yes, Shigure dives into his mouth, kissing him so hard he can’t breathe. 

At first, it’s an emotional breathlessness, one in which he briefly forgets that he’s a corporeal being who will face consequences for this, but it quickly becomes physical when he tries to breathe through his nose and realizes that it’s completely blocked. He pulls away from Shigure, coughing and sputtering.  
  
Shigure rubs gentle circles on his back. “Sorry,” he says. “I was rougher than I should have been. It’s hard to be considerate when I hate you as much as I do.”  
  
Tears prick at Kureno’s eyes. He’s pretty sure it’s just a byproduct of his coughing fit. This isn’t the first time Shigure claimed to hate him in history - it isn’t even the first time he’s said it today. It doesn’t hurt enough to make Kureno cry.  
  
It still hurts, though. Even in his own head, it’s hard to admit that he’d wanted a moment that was free of Akito.  
  
It’d been ridiculous to hope that he could find it inside of an act that was meant to upset her.  
  
It’d been ridiculous to imagine that Shigure had a single thought in his head about Kureno.  
  
He hadn’t had any of those ridiculous thoughts consciously. He’d felt them with his heart and with his breath. Now, he’s choking on his spit and on his shame. He’d been so, so stupid.  
  
Kureno lays down on the bed, hot wet face in his hands. He wants to apologize. The urge is so strong that it feels like nausea. But he isn’t sorry. He has nothing to be sorry about. Not to Shigure. 

He says, “I didn’t sleep with Akito _at you._ I did it to make her feel loved, and to keep her from _hurting me._ She probably did it to spite you, but that’s not my fault.”  
  
Laying down next to Kureno and stroking his hair, Shigure says, “you know how humans technically have the jaw strength to bite their own hands off, but their brains won’t allow them to use their full power?”  
  
Kureno nods, coughing into the crook of his elbow.  
  
“My anger - no, _rage_ regarding Akito is like that. It’s so deep and so powerful that if I allowed myself to truly feel it, I’d be ripped apart.”  
  
“And so you use me, who you hate, to make her a little bit irritated? How is that satisfying?”  
  
“It’s not.” Shigure sighs, throwing an arm across Kureno’s chest. “I’m not trying to be satisfied - I don’t know that that’s even possible for me right now. I’m just trying to stir things up a little.”  
  
“How is that fair to me?” The words feel tight in his throat.  
  
“It’s not - but you wanted to upset her too, didn’t you?” Shigure looks up with dark liquid eyes lit up by the moonlight shining through the window. “Your rage is buried so deeply I don’t know if you even realize it’s there - but it is. Nobody wants to live the way that you do.”  
  
“I don’t mind.” Tears river down his cheeks, and his voice shakes. “As long as Akito’s happy, I’m fine.”  
  
“No, you’re not.” Shigure cups Kureno’s cheek in his hand. “You’re miserable. You want someone who will worry about you, and you can’t get that with Akito. When you wake up sick in the middle of the night, you want to be with someone who takes your temperature and makes you okayu. Or at least someone who gets a safe distance away from you and then calls you to make sure you’re okay. You need somebody who cares about you.”  
  
Palming Kureno’s forehead, Shigure says, “you have a fever. Being out in the rain can’t have been good for you. Neither is all of this stress.”  
  
“Are you worrying about me?” Kureno asks with a sniff.  
  
“No,” he says, gently kissing his forehead. “Not in the way that you need. I’m sorry.” Shigure’s breath shudders in his chest, and he continues stroking Kureno’s hair. “As far as I’m concerned Akito is the only person in the world and I love her so much that I want to drink every single ounce of her blood. I want her to change, I want her to suffer - I don’t really care what happens to you.”  
  
It’s hard to believe that Shigure means it while he’s looking at Kureno with such a warm expression. But then, it’s no more contradictory than when Akito says she loves Kureno as she slams her fist into his chest. 

Whatever Shigure says, he doesn’t hate Kureno. He doesn’t love him, either. It’s okay. Kureno will find real love somewhere else, inside some other moment.   
  
Shigure sits up, looking down at Kureno’s fever flushed face with a sad smile. “That’s probably enough to get me good and sick,” he says. “As a thank you, how about I make you some okayu?” 


End file.
